TOMST3K

More Cache to Eagle series and meeting the Grandnephews

2010-05-25T02:24:00.005-05:00

Over the weekend Matthew, Diana and I found a few more geocaches. We found caches number 2 and 3 of the Council 10 Cache to Eagle series. One was in the Spring Creek Preserve near Garland where an Eagle Scout had cleared some of the walking trail of excess vegetation and installed a bench. The other was a multi cache at the Rockwall Public Library. A scout from that area had organized a book drive.

We also picked up another travel bug at a cache near our local Target store. I noticed when searching for nearby caches that the Bionicle travel bug was hidden over there and since we are huge Lego fans we had to go for it. Matthew and I plan to use it in a Lego movie and then place it, along with the Serial Kacher geocoin and our own travel bug, in a new cache we will hide inside Wynne Park in Garland near my parent's house.

Diana with Danny (top) and Connor (bottom). Both of them were ready for a nap about this time.

On Saturday, we went over to my brother Danny's house to visit him and his wife Susan and my nieces Sherry and Pamela, but most importantly to visit my new grandnephews Danny and Connor. Afterwards, we searched for and found a nearby cache that was pretty hard to get to but contained some cool stuff. I left behind a bracelet I made. The first one I've done since I began to learn how to make beads. Hopefully, someone will like it.

BSA Cache to Eagle Series

2010-05-19T21:20:00.001-05:00

Today Matthew and I found the first cache in the Cache to Eagle series of geocaches that is being sponsored by the Circle 10 Council of north Texas. Each cache is hidden near the site of an Eagle Scout's project. Today we visited the prayer labyrinth that was built by an Eagle Scout of Troop 1989 in Garland, Texas for the First Presbyterian Church. We will be visiting other caches in the series over the next few days.

We Start Geocaching

2010-05-17T16:31:00.001-05:00

Yesterday, Matthew and I started a new activity: geocaching. The Boy Scouts have recently added Geocaching as a merit badge and it sounded like fun. Our GPS unit arrived a couple of days ago and we've been learning how to use it and looking up geocache coordinates in our area. Being in a large metropolitan area there are lots of caches around us. We tried for four different caches and were successful on the last two. We will try again for the first two on another day. I think as our search pattern techniques get better we will have more luck.

Matthew is holding the container from the first cache we found, Ducks Gone Wild in Bass Park in Garland. Although it was only a few feet away from the walking trail, it took us a while to find it, mostly because of our inexperience in how to look around. Just as we were about to give up, we found it under a suspicious pile of rocks. Even though the container was not completely watertight there was a lot of good swag inside. Matthew took a small enamel pin and we left a toy penguin. We signed the log and made sure to replace it just as we found it.

After this success, we decide to head back to a cache that we were unable to find the day before called Shear Dropoff near our house. The cache was located near a small creek close to our house. We had no luck at all looking for it the day before, but this time we practically walked right to it. Matt had to squeeze into some dense undergrowth to get to it, but otherwise it was very easy to find. Having a thin youngster with you is definitely an advantage when geocaching.

The main reason we wanted to try this one again was because it contained a geocoin we wanted to retrieve. It was still there, so we took it and left a bandana behind. We will help the coin get a little further down the trail. Travel bugs and geocoins are always fun to find. We plan to release one of our own soon. The coin we found here is called Serial Kacher.

After signing the log and carefully replacing the cache we headed for home, a bit scratched and mosquito bitten but very happy after a successful afternoon of geocaching.

Rattlesnake Neckerchief Slide

2010-05-02T22:01:00.002-05:00

Recently, when I was leading a Cub Scout BALOO training course here in Garland, I needed something for us to do as a gathering activity while every one was arriving in the morning. I wanted to do something that they could take back to their den meetings, so I settled on this slide design. It's easy enough that a Tiger cub can make it with a bit of adult help and it looks good enough that Webelos and Scouts will want to wear it.

1. Start with a 12 inch by 3/4 inch piece of suede leather or faux leather material (which is much less expensive if you need to make a lot of these)

2. Using a very sharp knife or razor blade round the corners of one side of the strip of leather and split the leather into three 1/4 inch strips up to about 1 inch from one end. Do these first two steps before your meeting to save time.

3. Begin weaving the three strands together. Make sure to fold over the strands as you weave them to give the snake body a more three dimensional look. Hopefully, these pictures show what I mean.

4. Continue weaving until you are three inches from the end of the leather. Wrap one of the strands around the others two or three times and hot glue in place.

5. Trim off the excess leather from the strip you wrapped around the snake. Using scissors or a razor, trim the ends of the remaining two strands down to 1/8 inch in thickness. If you don't, they will be too thick to put beads on.

6. String three pony beads onto the two leather strands and secure the last one in place with a small drop of hot glue. Trim off the leather strands so that they extend about 3/4 inch past the beads. Keep one of the pieces you trim off for later use.

7. Using a leather punch, cut two eyes in the snake's face. split the end of the saved piece of tail leather to create a forked tongue and hot glue it to the underside of the snake's head.

8. Loop the snake to create about a one inch diamter slide and hot glue together. You are finished! I hope you and your Cub Scouts have fun making this slide. Please let me know how it works out or any improvements you make.

Yang passes away

2010-04-24T20:42:00.006-05:00

Sadly, today we buried Yang, one of our three hamsters. We don't know why she died so suddenly. When I was leaving to go camping early last Saturday morning, she was up and running around and begging for treats. By that evening she was gone. Due to the amount of rain and muddiness in our garden we weren't able to bury her until today. We painted a little cardboard box gold and stamped it with the chinese character for love and buried her under a blue garden stone beside a rose bush. Up in hamster heaven, I'm sure my old hamsters Slimy and Grimy are showing her around. Good bye Yang.

Gray Owl Spring Camporee

2010-04-21T20:46:00.001-05:00

This past weekend my Troop, Troop 57 out of Garland Texas attended the spring Camporee. The theme this time was cooking and the main competition was the Iron Chef contest. We had a great time hanging out with other local troops. The scouts built a rather elaborate tree structure to practice their knot tying skills. As a troop, we had good fortune in the cooking contests, taking third place in the cobbler contest with an apple-rhubarb cobbler. We also won the Iron Chef Award. the secret ingredient was Spam and we entered four dishes: Spam Tamales, Spam on Bowtie Pasta, Asian Spam Lettuce Wraps and Philly Spamsteak Sandwiches. The goal was to create a sort of world tour with Spam. I've posted the recipes under the Camping Recipes tab at the top of the site.